WildM, Glad you saw that note, I was going to point you at it but no need
And on the whole "don't update unless you hit a bug" concept; please play however you want to play, but with regard to this please remember:
1) We (Arcen and the players) really benefit from as many people as possible playing the prereleases and providing feedback both in terms of bug reports and suggestions.
2) You can maintain multiple installs of AI War, and back up your saves before loading them in a prerelease version.
3) If there is any _serious_ problem from a prerelease version, as in a crash or desync (both of which are very rare, particularly the latter), we fix them very quickly. I've seen Chris turnaround a fixed version in significantly less than an hour after a crash report; not that we can guarantee that level of service but it's something to keep in mind.
4) Even aside from the showstoppers, bug reports about features/changes just deployed in a recent prerelease typically get addressed pretty fast.
4) There's cool stuff in the prereleases